Survey: RIM and Apple have reduced Windows Mobile to a single-digit market share in Q2 2009

According to a new Canalys survey, Apple and RIM have reduced Microsoft’s Windows Mobile to just 9 percent market share in the second quarter of this year. The downward trend could continue given that Microsoft’s OEM partners are increasingly investing in other or own platforms, like HTC, Motorola, and Palm are doing. Meanwhile, Nokia has difficulties shrugging off Apple’s and RIM’s consumer smartphones, recording a fraction of the growth posted by its two rivals.

Canalys noted that “smartphones continue to shine as one of the brightest spots of the technology industry, with shipments growing despite the global recession.” How true. The research firm estimated worldwide smartphone sales during Q2 2009 of 38.1 million units, up over 33.6 million units sold in the year-ago quarter. Touchscreen models accounted for 30.6 percent (15.1 million units), followed by keypad devices (12.3 million units) like the Palm Treo/BlackBerry and keyboard phones (10.7 million units) like HTC’s Windows Mobile-powered devices.

Canalys’ vice president and principal analyst Chris Jones noted that the smartphones buzz is still alive because of a highly competitive landscape, unlike the desktop world that’s dominated by a certain Redmond-based company:

It is noteworthy how differently the smart phone business is developing compared to the PC industry. PCs are a highly standardised, commoditized platform, where one model is often largely indistinguishable from another. Consequently, PC price points are incredibly low, which is good for customers, but the industry lacks excitement. Smart phones are different – Nokia, Apple, RIM and Palm have all achieved success by developing their own operating systems and delivering distinct devices and interfaces. Android customisation will further add to this diverse mix. As a result, new smart phones are front page news around the world.

The analyst warned that such a high degree of diversification is fragmenting the market: Carriers must endure high certification and support costs, the developers lack resources to port apps to all platforms, while end-users can’t take their apps if they switch platforms. Google bets that web-based apps will replace native programs created for specific platforms, hoping that cloud-based mobile apps will address incompatibility issues. Platform-wise, Android recorded 2.8 percent while Windows Mobile took just 9 percent market share. Symbian, RIM, and Apple are the top three mobile OS makers with 50.3 percent, 20.9 percent, and 13.7 percent of the global mobile OS share, respectively.

Nokia is still the world’s leading smartphone maker, with a 44.3 percent global share, or more than twice as much the combined share of RIM and Apple. The company sold 16.9 million smartphones in Q2 2009, up over 15.3 million units and the 45.5 percent share posted in the year-ago quarter. The second-best RIM moved 8 million devices to earn a 20.9 percent share, representing a 41.6 percent annual growth over the 16.7 percent share on sales of 5.6 million units posted a year ago. The iPhone came out the third with a 13.7 percent global share on sales of 5.2 million units (the figure excludes iPhone 3GS sales). Apple’s figure represents a whopping 626.9 percent growth over the 2.1 percent share on 717,000 units sold in the year-ago quarter.

Nokia also leads in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Asia Pacific region where it took 64 percent and 59.7 percent share in Q2, respectively. Sharp and Fujitsu emerged as #2 and #3 in the EMEA region, with 9.4 percent and 9.2 percent share, respectively. In the EMEA region, however, Nokia is followed by Apple (13.6 percent) and RIM (10.3 percent).

Despite the indisputable lead, however, Nokia’s smartphone business grew just 10.4 percent annually, unlike Apple and RIM which grew 626.9 percent and 41.6 percent annually, respectively. Apple and RIM lead the pack in the U.S., rising fast at the expense of Windows Mobile-powered devices. Canalys summed this up by saying that “operating system choices are proliferating, primarily at Microsoft’s expense.” RIM is #1 in the U.S. with 5.7 million smartphones sold, earning the company a whopping 52 percent of U.S. smartphones. The second-best Apple accounted for nearly one in four smartphones sold (23 percent unit share), selling 2.6 million units in the U.S. in Q2 2009 – despite the fact that only AT&T and Apple are selling the iPhone nationwide.

Christian’s Opinion

Apple’s 626.9 percent growth may seem incredible, but note that the company experienced a sharp drop during Q1 and Q2 of 2008 because people stopped buying the first-gen iPhone in anticipation of the iPhone 3G, the fact evident in just 717,000 first-gen iPhones sold in Q2 2008. Don’t forget the fact that Apple now sells its iPhone in 80 countries while offering several devices (the new iPhone 3GS in 16GB and 32GB flavors and the $99 8GB iPhone 3G model) that cater to a broader price range.

Nokia, on the other hand, has no reason to celebrate. Despite being the world’s #1 smartphone maker (44.3 percent global smartphone share) and Symbian’s 50.3 percent share, Apple and RIM are outpacing Nokia’s growth by a large margin and Symbian is actually free-falling from the 72 percent share it had in 2006. That said, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Nokia partnered with Microsoft and licensed ActiveSync in an effort to remain competitive in enterprise markets where Office/Exchange compatibility is a must and RIM is a deeply entrentched rival.

The fact that Apple and RIM underperformed in the Asia Pacific region indicates possible huge gains in the future assuming they successfully crack this market. A regional sales breakdown also reveals that Apple is a bigger global threat to Nokia than RIM.